Net radio bill passes House — Update at 7:28 p.m. PDT: Quotes have been added from National Association of Broadcasters on why it no longer opposes the bill. — Web radio stations live to fight another day. — The House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill that Web radio stations …

Rumor: Is the Apple TV being replaced? — We just got an e-mail from an anonymous Apple reseller, stating that they received an e-mail from Apple with instructions to remove all Apple TV displays and literature and to destroy them (which I assume means throw away the literature, send back the Apple TVs) by September 30, 2008 at 5 PM.

Video? I Doubt It — Canon's much-ballyhooed but not universally welcomed 5D Mark II also (and this is a new thing for SLRs) operates as a high-def videocam. There are two videos linked from The Online Photographer and they are mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful. But it won't work for you.

The Google Hive Mind — As Google turns 10 years old, that important birthday sees the company more powerful than ever before. With its competitors in disarray, the Big G seems likely to grow even further. The secret to its success? For me, it's what I've been calling the “Google Hive Mind.”

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection — only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans — Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music.

Last.fm iPhone 2.0 — Back in July we launched Last.fm on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It was the end result of months of hard work and we were pretty happy with how it turned out. We received tons of positive feedback and although we weren't able to launch in every country …

My Blackberry As A Bomb Sniffer? — Expensive radiation detectors may not be as effective as widely distributed chips in cell phones. — From the magazine issue dated Oct 6, 2008 — What do bananas, smoke alarms, toilets and large granite buildings have in common?

Stop Complaining about Apple and the App Store — This week there have been several stories on the blogsphere (here, here, and here, for example) which consist of developers complaining that Apple has rejected an iPhone application that they submitted to be part of the App Store in iTunes …

KDDI to launch 1Gbps fiber-optic service in Oct — TOKYO — KDDI Corp will launch a fiber-optic communications service with upload and download speeds each of up to one gigabit per second on Oct 1. The new service will target people living in single-family homes and low-rise apartment buildings.

Convergence for the smartphone and credit card is nearer — Visa is now readying two sets of credit card payment services on separate continents for users of Android and Nokia smartphones. And there may be more convergence to come around mobile payments in various sectors of the globe.